


Phosphorescence

by hes5thlazarus



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Justice has a Brooklyn accent, Purpose is from the Bronx
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28657500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hes5thlazarus/pseuds/hes5thlazarus
Summary: A Despair demon in the Foundry district is clogging up the whole city with a miasma of misery. Justice runs into an old friend of his, during Anders' first few weeks in Kirkwall, and the three set to work. Heavy-handed allegory abounds, but, Justine opines, that’s the Dreamers’ fault.
Relationships: Anders & Justice (Dragon Age), Anders & Lirene (Dragon Age)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Phosphorescence

Contrary to what the name implies, Darktown glows phosphorescent at night with the souls of the damned. Anders thinks, that’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it Justice. Justice says no just look at them, they’re fucking miserable. Their screams rip across the Veil for centuries: but now I am here, and I have answered the call. Anders thinks, great. He edges around a screaming spirit that has stayed in stasis since the Tevinter occupation of the city. Why hasn’t it turned? Look carefully, Justice shimmers his eyes and the spirit becomes an elf, bald, anonymous: a shartan.   
  
“A Shartan?” Anders mutters aloud, pressing a hand to his eyes. Pressure is twinging behind his sinuses. He doesn’t get nosebleeds, not since he was a child, but he feels something coming. “There were...multiple?” Yeah, Justice says, keep up. So much has been lost. The Mage Underground has a safe house or five here, like they do everywhere, but the ones in Darktown have millennia of history, from the Rebel Wolf’s siege of the city to the last stand of Arlathan against the Tevinter Imperium to the endless little rebellions the people of this city have staged. Justice says, I am back and I will not be forgotten. Keep moving--templar ahead. Anders leaves a trail of phosphorescence behind him as everyone with spirit in Darktown does. The Veil is so thin here Justice is almost whole. Purpose guides him to the sewer.   
  
Long time no see man, it says. We could’ve used you two hundred years ago.   
  
Well. Ya know. Justice hums in his head and Anders doesn’t understand how he can hear everyone and everything, but he says, “Big things coming. That Blight shook things up.” It’s both of them talking there, all three of them united, and Anders now confident picks his way through the sludge and only slinks a little bit in disgust, and when he gets to the pipe Jowan to ld him about, he whispers the password:“Revasan.”    
  
The place of freedom, Justice says. That’s what it’s meant to be, Purpose adds. And Anders knows: that is what we will make it be. Keep moving.   
  
Kirkwall’s nasty at night but it’s exactly the nasty he likes, shady deals and corrupt cops abound, but he is back and the mages are fulminating and the elves too, he meets the Radicalists, who are skeptical at first that there can ever be peace between quick and slow, but when Fen’Ara gets fucked up by Ianto’s men, Anders drags him out of the gutter and tends to his wounds, so when the templars are about, he’s got several pairs of eyes who see better in the dark watching out for him. And the spirits remember too, and each awful brutal act is recorded infinitely, but the good is too, the good is too, even though they break, and Anders starts to understand what Andraste meant about magic serving men and the Maker’s first children, because when Lirene set up her office a wisp named Compassion started hovering about.   
  
Be good to it, Justice says. They break too much.   
  
“And you don’t?” Anders asks.   
  
Nah, kid. I’m eternal. Stronger even than Fear. You are too, if you do this right. Despair’s had this city for far too long. It’s time for us to take it back.   
  
Huh. Anders mulls that over, as he mashes elfroot Athenril brought him from the Wounded Coast. A Despair demon--I’ve never met one of those.   
  
Oh, you have. Your Circle’s full of them. They don’t need to talk like me. They’re more like a miasma. That’s why all the kids have coughs.   
  
Alarmed, Anders drops the pestle, and it clatters to the floor. “It’s in the Foundry?” he demands. “Fuck.” He thinks, I have to do something about that. So he does. Because he has to, because as Justice says, Despair doesn’t need to talk, it’s a miasma and it’s taking them all, Kirkwall and Thedas and the Gallows, and when he breaks Karl out he wants Karl to breathe deeply for once, the clean salt air, like he did, swimming through Lake Calenhad and running to Amaranthine. He deserves the stars, unmoored in the spinning sky, and he deserves the Satinalia moon. They all do. They all do.   
  
He talks to himself, yeah, but so do half the people in Darktown, there’s so much constant chatter in the miasma of the past two thousand years that you may as well converse with it, and he follows the conversations as they get more and more miserable through the sewers up the pipes into the Foundry District, and the sludge is nothing a good barrier can’t fix. He listens, he can’t help it, and he hears “I miss my mother they sold him you can’t do that why me Andraste preserve me Andraste guide me Dread Wolf take you Mythal hear my prayer” but Purpose says gently, kid. Kid. You can’t grant every prayer. You gotta keep moving. Justice, you’re leaking a little. And Anders blinks and he realizes he is holding onto the glowing moss of the wall for dear life and he is sobbing, because the whole city is rotten, rotting to its very core. Beyond the little ledge he walks is a roaring river of Despair’s sludge.   
  
Justice says, I shoulda come sooner.   
  
“We’re here now,” Anders says aloud. “That’s what matters.” And, gingerly, he wipes his eyes and he keeps moving. He focuses his mind and keeps a barrier between him and the Fade, so thin now it may as well be lace, and climbs up a ladder into some sort of control room. The air’s hot and he’s breathing heavy, and everything tastes like blood. Iron, Anders grounds himself, iron: iron in the blood, iron in the earth--not blood. The walls are duller now, the spirit-glow deadened by the muck, but behind him it slowly revives, and Purpose is floating around feeling kind of smug. Keep going, man, keep going. We’re almost there. Despair won’t take my city yet.   
  
In the center of the factory is a man and he looks almost normal when he turns around to greet them, except that he is dead. His eyes are hollow and the skin under them bruised, his mouth is turned in a crescent frown, so much that he looks like a clown. Anders laughs, taken aback, and the man flinches.   
  
“You’ve come too late,” Despair says.   
  
Justice grieves and Anders freezes, but Purpose steps forward, whole now. It looks like Lirene, who runs the Ferelden community center in Darktown. It smiles at him and then turns to Despair. Nah, Purpose says. Came here just in time.   
  
And Anders brings down Andraste’s lightning upon the plant, and lights up Despair. The sludge slops onto the ground and like a massive wave rushes towards him but Justice says, No. My town, Despair. My rules. They beat the muck back and even when Despair tries to freeze them Anders flashes hot, and the walls come alive with that Darktown phosphorescence and Anders hears a clammer of the voices of the damned, heard and redeemed, Andraste guide me--   
  
“This is my city and I am not your slave pay me for my work or leave you have no right I am right we beat back the Blight and we’ve beaten back you you can kill me sure but you can’t kill an idea from the river to the sea Elvhenan will be free if Andraste can raise an army we can too the city of chains well we broke them Kirkwall’s free now tell that to Minrathous fuck yeah I will--”   
  
Anders beats back despair and brings the light back into the dark illumination, the Foundry gears grind to a halt and he drops to his knees, exhausted. Purpose is gone, fulfilled and moved on. He pants. The spirit of Despair is weeping, and he heaves himself to his feet with his staff and extends a hand.   
  
Compassion, Justice says. Come back.   
  
Too much, it says. It feels dirty. Too much. Can’t get away from the muck, it’s in my lungs, my lungs--   
  
I know. It’s hard. Living allegory’s heavy, blame the Dreamers and their reductive minds for that. But come on. You can get clean. The air’s polluted, sure. You did that. You’ll have to atone. But don’t we all. Let Despair go and be kind to yourself. We all make mistakes, kid. Let it go.   
  
Anders stumbles back through the maze of tunnels following the singing glow of Darktown’s Fade-infused lichen, and when he gets back to Lirene’s he realizes he’s been crying, he always is, Kirkwall’s so much, and his tears are leaving muddy little trails down his face. Lirene sighs when she sees him and hands him a towel.   
  
“There’s clean clothes in the donation bin,” she says. “Get yourself cleaned up. Have you eaten yet? Some of the men snuck out to the Sundermount and managed to get a few deer before the elves chased them off. So it’ll be venison stew from now ‘til Wintersend.”   
  
“Yeah,” Anders says. “Yeah.” He wipes his face off and changes quickly, and when he walks back in, scrubbed raw inside and out, he marvels at her bustling around the hall the Fereldens’ Association managed to rent out. She hands him a bowl of stew. It’s gamey, but it’s alright.   
  
“How do you do this?” he asks her. “Just see all this suffering, and still keep yourself useful, keep it moving? Knowing it’s not enough?”   
  
Lirene rolls her eyes. “You can’t think about it like that. You just have to do it. Because no one else will, and what else are you going to do? There’s no use wallowing in despair when there’s a job to do. Now, are you going to eat or just keep gaping at me? Move along.”


End file.
